NEW YORK -- Barely two years ago, Casey Nicholaw was working on a new musical called “Robin and the 7 Hoods” at the Old Globe Theatre when he got a call that would send his career into the stratosphere (not to mention seriously rock Broadway).

The gist of it: Would he like to talk with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of the TV animation sensation “South Park,” about directing and choreographing a Broadway musical comedy on the subject of Mormons?

Flash-forward to 2012: “Robin” has yet to make it to New York (although it still has high hopes, to borrow from one of the musical’s better-known tunes).

But “The Book of Mormon,” the show Nicholaw wound up co-directing with Parker as well as choreographing, has long since become one of the biggest things to hit Broadway in years.

Nicholaw won a Tony Award in 2011 for the smash-hit show (after previous nominations for “Spamalot” and “The Drowsy Chaperone”), and “Mormon” remains an impossibly hot ticket on Broadway, even as a national tour gets under way (it hits L.A. this Wednesday) and a London production gears up for a winter premiere.

It’s been a time of heady success for the 1980 graduate of San Diego’s Clairemont High (and student at Mission Bay High before that), who came up through San Diego Junior Theatre and appeared in his first Old Globe show, “The Robber Bridegroom,” at age 16.

But Nicholaw got to the top of Broadway the hard way — moving to New York and surviving on a journeyman actor’s (meager) budget while building his credits with ensemble work in such shows as “Crazy for You” and “Victor/Victoria.” He also waited tables all over town, including three years at a barbecue joint on the Upper West Side (“the early-bird special was, like, $4.95 for two people,” he recalls).

So it seems appropriate that he sit for an interview at an actor-friendly Manhattan eatery, the Brooklyn Diner near Times Square. The place is a quick subway ride from the Central Park apartment Nicholaw shares with his partner, Josh Marquette, a hair designer whom he met during “Drowsy.”

Over a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes, Nicholaw talked about the “Mormon” phenomenon, his upcoming projects (which include a reprise of the musical “Elf” and a new musical based on the movie “Animal House”) and growing up as a musical-theater geek in San Diego.

Q: Are there some specific ways your life has changed in the wake of “Mormon”-mania?

A: Oh, of course, you know? I have a Tony Award now. It hasn’t changed too much in the theater world, but it gives me entree for film stuff and TV stuff, where people will see me more easily now because they know me.

(And) yes, I bought a new apartment, and I’m really happy there. I’m able to do that because it’s such a big hit. That part of it’s been great — the financial part has been terrific. And that changes anyone.

But what’s funny is that with the exception of that result, it kind of hasn’t gone (under my skin). I just go, “That’s a show I worked on, and it’s my job to keep it up.” The emotions change with whether a show is a hit or a flop, but you still have to do the same job.